Often I see people on TRP mention the dating market as a result of SMV, including for women.

Clearly, both men and women value looks in a relationship and attraction matters, but I would think that this is not indicative of relationship success, happiness or fulfillment. If you look in a way where you are chosen because of your looks, it might lead you to attract "the wrong type of people", your relationship not lasting in the long run, you encountering problems along the way when it is shown that you don't actually like each other. It also means a higher likelyhood of being objectified in a relationship, and not be considered as a person, but as a role of the object. It means people doing something for you is dependant on pursuing, rather than supporting because you care. I mean, I'd argue that this is why you see attractive women on Tiktok and attractive celebrities being cheated on, having toxic partners etc. It also creates a bad personality where you see yourself in regards to how you look, and you will chose people based on them caring about your looks. It probably affects the feeling of love negatively, thus also whether you actually like someones appereance as related to them. Instead a human is a product on a shopping market. Now this is mostly from the perspective of a woman, but I know men who had it easy with women and women approaching them - making them long for "true love, connection as a person" rather than to be chosen because they are hot. This doesn't mean looks aren't a factor or that people can't chose based on both, but the risk is clearly that people go in a relationship with someone seeing them as an object.

In practice, I'm not so sure about whether this is how most people do date or function. This argument that a woman in her 20s is more desireable to a man in his 40s than a woman in her 30s for example is mostly theorethical to me. In terms of function as a sex object, sure. In practice I see men in that age purposefully chosing against younger women, even when they can, because they value other things. Younger women are potential fuckmeat for those that prioritise that. Sure, some sugardaddy-sugarbaby relationship does exist, but it's rare where I am.

But for those people where their attractiveness is a strong point, it's probably often to some extent like this. A person might not like this attractive person, but ends up in a relationship with them because of it. Arguments, different goals, treated as an object (and subsequently the idea that relationship satisfaction depends on looks) might definitely destroy the relationship. Thus, I wonder if high "SMV" is maybe a bad thing on the dating makret. I'm not saying that people can't find each other very attractive and be happy, it's more that the likelyhood is someone prioritises it. Most women I assume would want to be chosen for who they are as persons, not despite looks (i.e. want the man to find them very beautiful) but the looks are a bonus.

So in practice, SMV might not predict good relationships at all, not neccesarily even increase the value with actually "high value" people, rather it attracts the option of other people with high SMV who prioritise SMV.